Reign of Assassins (2010)

It took them over half of a decade, but finally Reign of Assassins hits the US in home
video release. Fortunately, for those martial arts movie fans like myself who
held out on importing it, the film was worth the wait. Co-directed by the
iconic John Woo and starring the talented Michelle Yeoh, Reign of Assassins is a modern wuxia that blends the classic
elements of the style with the modern splash that impresses beyond the
normal sense of outrageous epic tones that come with the genre. It’s effective
in its heart, stylish in its action, and ultimately a fun and thrilling ride
that fans will be wanting to experience. Yes, Reign of Assassins was worth the
time spent waiting for it.

Zeng Jing (Michelle Yeoh) has desperately tried to put her
past behind her. She was once an elite assassin with the Dark Stone clan, but
when her boss becomes infatuated with finding the remains of a powerful kung fu
monk and unlocking its secrets she steals the remains and hides them only to go
into hiding herself. Now she’s married to a wonderful husband (Jung Woo-sung)
and trying to get on with her life. That is, until a bank robbery brings her
skill set out into the open and the Dark Stone assassins catch scent of her
existence. Now it will be a fight to death to finally bury the life she left
behind to live the one she wants.

They always have each other at the end of the day.

It’s wonderful that it seems wuxia is making a comeback
lately. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that Anchor Bay decided to finally
released Reign of Assassins. The
Chinese box office is booming and there is a renewed interest in telling
stories in this style. Even though this film came out around 2010 overseas,
where the wuxia style has remained a somewhat prevalent force in film style for
most of Chinese film existence, these films are finally seeing a renewed
rebirth on a wider world wide scale. It definitely helps that Reign of Assassins
is able to relate the foundations of the genre in a modern way and do it
successfully. It’s not nearly as artistic as Zhang Yimou’s wuxia films like House of Flying Daggers, but it is a
step up from some of the more mainstream and watered down material like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2 (which
was fun and entertaining despite its flaws). Reign may not convince those skeptical of the style to change their
minds, but it has enough classic flavor to appease established fans and enough
story and style to win over those cinephiles who are fringing on the genre.

Perhaps one of the keys for Reign of Assassins to work is that it seems to throwback to classic
Shaw Brothers wuxia films from the 70s in many of its structure elements and
gimmicks. Structurally speaking, the film does have to seemingly fast forward
through many pieces of its plotting to be able to get to the bigger plot
devices needed to move the film around. It starts off focusing on the assassins
and vomiting out plot points in quick fashion, but it transitions to the “killer
hiding in plain sight” plot element that has been used in so many films before.
Here is where the film earns some of its charm as it focus on an assassin
trying to go straight in her life and finding a young husband who is head over heels
for her. Their romantic subplot is heavily overlooked for the sake of pacing,
reminding me of tactics that Chor Yuen would use in films like Full Moon Scimitar to pull it off, and
luckily the two have solid onscreen chemistry and Jung Woo-sung steals a lot of
the scenes from this point on. This happens a variety of times as the movie
will leap months at a time to the next event (again, I’m reminded of how Chor
Yuen used the technique in films like Dragon Sword and Heaven Sabre to cover
the time of a more epic plot), but the pacing is effective and the leaping structure
can only come off as a mild nuisance as the onscreen work sparks and the
character arcs never suffer horrendously from it. In fact, our assassin in
hiding and her husband seem to have fairly strong arcs that work really well to
keep the audience engaged and it’s key for this film to work.

From there, Reign of
Assassins pummels the audience with plenty of twists, turns, and action
pieces to keep them occupied and hooked into the sword clashing chess game that
is being played out. The film really works best in the second half (outside of
some out of place motivations for the Wheel King that arise in the third act
which seem forced) when the layers of various character interactions are being
played out. The arrival of her old assassin team is littered with great silly
gimmicks, including her replacement who is a woman that seems to have trouble
keeping her clothes on and an assassin called The Magician with a bright
colored cape who can occasionally shoot fireballs. The action is well shot, not
relying too heavily on CGI (a nice change of pace compared to some of the newer
wuxia films and perhaps one of key aspects of having John Woo on as a producer
and a co-director, I would assume) that’s dynamic and uses the wire work to
strong effect. If you are not a martial arts fan that doesn’t buy into the high
flying swift sword work and the gimmicks that come with it, than Reign may not work even in this portion,
but for those willing to throw their chips in with the movie it can be highly entertaining
and filled with just enough heart to work.

Shawn Yue vs Michelle Yeoh. Classic.

Many of the reviews that I read previous to watching Reign of Assassins seemed to have issues
with the structure and leaps from the serious tones to the humorous and gimmicky
ones, but for this reviewer it was a pleasant blend of old school cheesy mixed
with a knack for modern speed and visual dynamics. It can be easy to see why
this film garnered some mixed reviews when it first premiered, but the balance
of fun and serious worked in spades for me and it garners a place in my
collection for films to be watched again and again. Reign of Assassins isn’t high art when it comes to wuxia, but it’s
a fantastic balance of entertainment and thoughtful character work that makes
it such a great watch. As I mentioned, it won’t make believers out of wuxia
skeptics, but for those willing to buy into the gimmicks it’s a highly
entertaining and effective watch.

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